A primary source is the closest available record of an action, statement, observation, or analysis: legislation, a hearing record, an agency report, an archival file, a dataset, original media, or a full on-record interview. Primary does not mean infallible. An official file may preserve an allegation without endorsing it, a witness may be sincere but mistaken, and a declassified document may contain inaccurate reporting.
Choose the source type that answers the question
- Law and oversight: use enacted text, bill versions, committee pages, transcripts, submitted statements, and official video. Introduced language is not enacted law.
- Institutional findings: use the report, case-resolution paper, dataset, or briefing issued by the office responsible. Record the version and date.
- Historical events: use archive catalogues, series and file descriptions, scans, contemporaneous correspondence, and later release notes. Keep the event date separate from the release date.
- Images and sensor records: seek the earliest available file, acquisition context, metadata, calibration information, and the analysis that supports any interpretation.
- Claims and testimony: use the full statement or recording. It establishes what was said; other evidence must establish the underlying claim.
Use the Glossary for terms, Sources and Methodology for weighting and corroboration, and the claim-evaluation worksheet before drawing a conclusion.
Official U.S. repositories
National Archives UAP Records Collection
Issuer: National Archives and Records Administration. Holdings: Record Group 615 and links to UAP- and UFO-related records across federal record groups and presidential libraries. Use: start here for catalogue identifiers, transferred agency records, and collection context. Limitation: not every described record is digitized, and archival custody does not validate every statement in a file. Open the NARA UAP collection guide.
Project Blue Book guide and case files
Issuer: National Archives and Records Administration for records created by the U.S. Air Force. Holdings: administrative files, chronologically arranged sighting case files, indexes, photographs, film, and related Air Force material through the program’s 1969 closure. Use: identify a date, location, roll, series, or case-file reference before citing. Limitation: some records require research-room or bulk-download access; a case file may contain unverified reports. Use the Project Blue Book research guide.
AARO congressional products and annual reports
Issuer: All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, U.S. Department of Defense. Holdings: annual reports, congressional briefings, hearing material, presentations, and historical-review publications. Use: cite the exact report year, page, and assessment language. Limitation: public reports reflect the data available to AARO and may omit protected operational or intelligence detail. Browse AARO congressional and press products.
AARO case-resolution reports and FOIA reading room
Issuer: AARO. Holdings: selected official imagery, analytical resolution reports, and records released through electronic FOIA. Use: pair a clip with its resolution paper and note the office’s confidence. Limitation: selection for publication is not a complete census of reports, and an unresolved item is not an origin finding. Open AARO UAP cases or search the AARO reading room.
NASA UAP Independent Study
Issuer: National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Holdings: the study charter, public meeting material, presentations, and 2023 final report. Use: source statements about scientific data quality, calibration, metadata, reporting, and research recommendations. Limitation: the team was not commissioned to resolve individual sightings. Open NASA’s study materials.
Congress.gov and committee records
Issuer: Library of Congress and the U.S. Congress. Holdings: bill text and versions, actions, amendments, committee information, and Congressional Record material; committee sites may add hearing video, transcripts, and submitted statements. Use: record the Congress number, bill number, version, action date, and committee. Limitation: introduced text, an amendment, a committee report, and enacted law have different status. Search Congress.gov.
FBI Vault
Issuer: Federal Bureau of Investigation. Holdings: scanned Bureau records released for public access. Use: capture document numbers, dates, pages, and redaction markings. Limitation: a released law-enforcement record may repeat information the agency did not verify, and search results are not proof that no other records exist. Browse the FBI UFO files.
GAO Roswell records review
Issuer: U.S. Government Accountability Office. Holdings: the 1995 report describing GAO’s search for government records related to the 1947 Roswell incident and the scope of agencies queried. Use: cite what GAO searched and found. Limitation: the report is bounded by its request and search scope; absence from that search is not proof that no record ever existed. Open GAO report NSIAD-95-187.
Representative non-U.S. official routes
United Kingdom National Archives
Issuer: The National Archives, United Kingdom. Holdings: research guidance for Ministry of Defence policy files, Parliamentary business, public correspondence, and sighting reports, with catalogue series such as DEFE and AIR. Use: search by record series and reference, not only a case nickname. Limitation: many records are not online, and the guide states that earlier files were subject to destruction policies. Use the UK UFO research guide.
France’s GEIPAN case database
Issuer: GEIPAN within the French space agency CNES. Holdings: published civilian case files, testimony documents, investigation conclusions, classifications, observation dates, and update dates. Use: read the case documentation and GEIPAN’s classification definition together. Limitation: categories A, B, C, and D belong to GEIPAN’s method and should not be translated directly into AARO or editorial labels. Search official GEIPAN cases.
Library and Archives Canada
Issuer: Library and Archives Canada. Holdings: federal archival descriptions and digitized objects, including National Research Council non-meteoric sighting reports and related government fonds. Use: capture the item ID, fonds, series, volume, reel, file number, and access conditions. Limitation: public research lists can mix archival and published items; confirm each item’s creator and hierarchy in the catalogue. Open the official non-meteoric sighting series description.
Build a citation that can survive a broken link
Record the issuing body, creator when different, full title, creation or publication date, document number, version, page or timestamp, archive identifier, stable URL, and access date. Example: National Archives and Records Administration, Project Blue Book Case Files on Sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects, 1947-1969, series identifier, specific case date and location, page or frame, catalogue URL, accessed August 6, 2026. For a bill, add the Congress, bill number, version, and action date. For video, add the event title and timestamp.
Preservation and verification checks
- Save the title page, index, attachments, and surrounding pages needed to understand an excerpt.
- Record the repository identifier and access date before saving a local reference copy.
- Compare checksums when an issuer supplies them; do not claim authenticity from a matching filename.
- Note whether media is original, transcoded, clipped, stabilized, or re-uploaded.
- Revisit status-sensitive pages before publication and use an archived copy only as evidence of what the page showed at that time.
- Report broken links or incorrect citations through the source and corrections route.
If an official repository does not contain the record you need, search its reading room and catalogue before filing a request. The FOIA Assistance guide explains how to target an agency component and ask for existing federal records. A search result, release, redaction, or absence can prove only what its scope supports.